The manufacture of bowed string instruments has a long and colorful history including the work of many skilled craftsman. Through trial and error, and more recently through the application of principles of acoustics, ways of making instruments such as the violin have developed and changed, but the basic techniques normally used have not been altered fundamentally since the work of artisans in the early 18th century.
The traditional technique, much simplified, involves cutting a top or front plate, preferably from spruce wood, cutting a back plate from curly maple, pear or sycamore wood, cutting side strips from curly maple, constructing a form, bending the side strips and gluing them, on the form, to corner blocks, cutting the neck from maple, the fingerboard and tailpiece from ebony and the bridge from maple, and shaping and joining these parts, with the soundpost, bass bar, pegs, etc. in a complex procedure which requires much time, skill and care. The result, if properly done, can be an instrument of fine quality and excellent sound.
The procedure is, quite obviously, highly labor intensive and the resulting instrument, even if done on a more "mass production" basis, is necessarily rather expensive. Thus, one who is a beginning player, or one who wishes to play as a rather casual hobby, must make a substantial investment to obtain an instrument of even moderate quality.
The traditional, and some more recently developed, techniques of violin and other instrument construction are described in the following documents which are mentioned for general informational purposes.
"Violins and Violinists" by Franz Farga, publ. by Barrie & Rockliff, The Cresset Press, London (1969). PA1 "Making Musical Instruments", by Irving Sloane, A Sunrise Book, E. P. Dutton, New York (1978). PA1 "Makin' Your Own Country Instruments", by Andy dePaulle, Oliver Press, Willits, California (1976). PA1 Violin-Making As American Art, Philip Kass and Michael Olmert, Smithsonian Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, September, 1977, pp. 107-110. PA1 "The Physics of Music" Readings from Scientific American, publ. by W. H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco, (1978); articles by C. M. Hutchins, "The Physics of Violins" (pp. 56-68) from November, 1962 issue; and by John C. Schelleng, "The Physics of the Bowed String" from January, 1974 issue.
Various efforts at producing violins, mostly of unusual structure, are shown in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 244,730 Berliner, 752,080 Lambotte, 759,850 Battram, 769,649 Grover, 934,413 Moertel, 1,329,594 Going, 1,384,492 Sivard, 1,438,386 Lucas, 1,447,174 Grover, 1,555,813 Allison, 1,556,871 Nichols, 1,786,891 Brown et al.
In addition, there are kits available from certain manufacturers, such as the International Violin Co., 414 E. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, and Scherl and Roth, Inc., 1729 Superior Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44114. The kit approach is, at least in theory, a highly desirable one because it permits one who has time but relatively little money to invest his or her effort and obtain a usable instrument. Unfortunately, the kits which are available rely on traditional construction approaches and it is necessary for the purchaser to have considerable manual skill in the assembly process, even when starting with the partly prefabricated components, in order to have an instrument with good sound as the end product.